Mass, luminosity, and line width relations of Galactic molecular clouds
P. M. Solomon, A. R. Rivolo, J. Barrett, A. Yahil;
ApJ, 1987, 319, 730
ABSTRACT:The paper presents an analysis of the cloud sizes, velocity line widths, viral masses, and CO luminosities of 273 Galactic molecular clouds which utilizes the higher resolution Massachusetts-Stony Brook Galactic plane CO survey.It is shown that the molecular clouds are in or near viral equilibrium and are not confined by pressure equilibrium with a warm or hot phase of interstellar matter.
Allowance is made for the mass-luminosity law in a cloud model consisting of a large number of optically thick clumps in viral equilibrium each with a thermal internal velocity dispersion; the clouds are optically thin at a fixed velocity along the line of sight.
KEYWORDS: mass distribution, mass to light ratios, milky way galaxy, molecular clouds, spectral line width, astronomical catalogs, astronomical models, astronomical spectroscopy, carbon monoxide, virial theorem
PERSOKEY:statistical analysis, co, molecular clouds, ,
CODE: solomon87